The largest Blast Furnace in India was blown-in at SAIl’s IISCO Steel Plant in presence of CS Verma, chairman SAIl, recently at Burnpur. Named Kalyani, the state-of-the-art furnace has a useful volume of 4,160 cubic meters and has now become the biggest operating blast furnace in the country.
Prior to this, the largest blast furnace of the country was installed by SAIl at its Rourkela Steel Plant in 2013 which has a useful volume of 4,060 cubic meters.
Immediately after the blowing in of the new blast furnace, Verma said, “With this, IISCO Steel Plant is firmly on course to regain its glorious past.” The start-up of this furnace is seen as the culmination of a massive modernisation and expansion work in Burnpur for the installation of a state of the art 2.5 million tons per annum steel plant. The other major upstream and downstream units of the new steel plant — Coke Oven Battery, Sinter Plant, Basic Oxygen Furnaces, Continuous Casters and Wire Rod Mill have already commenced operations.
The environment-friendly furnace is equipped with most advanced systems such as pulverised coal injection, cast house fume extraction, cast house slag granulation, high top pressure operation coupled with top pressure recovery turbine, twin material bin bell-less top, waste heat recovery and conveyor belt charging system. It incorporates level II automation and has twin flat cast house with four tap holes. Speaking volume about the commitment of SAIl towards cleaner environment, the furnace, not only ensures minimum emissions and recovers waste energy to the fullest, it also has a closed-loop cooling system resulting in almost zero water discharge.
lighting up of Kalyani elicited huge round of applause from the employees of IISCO steel plant who witnessed the historical event. Chairman, SAIl lighted up the first stove in presence of director technical, SS Mohanty, director projects and business planning, TS Suresh, ED in-charge, ISP, IC Sahu and a gathering of around 200 ISP employees. Named after Goddess Kalyaneshwari, with its famous temple and centre of shakti worship just 20 kms away, the furnace can produce about 8,000 tons of hot metal per day.
Kalyani, the new blast furnace, is the fifth blast furnace that has come up in the long and illustrious history of IISCO steel plant. This new furnace will help the steel plant to ramp up its hot metal capacity to 2.9 MTPA. This world-class furnace installed by POSCO (E&C) of South Korea along with NCC ltd, is set to become the veritable jewel in the crown of SAIl. With this the employees at Burnpur have restored the confidence bestowed on them to change the face of industrial economy through the single largest investment by SAIl in West Bengal.
IISCO holds the proud distinction of being one of the oldest integrated steel plants of the country. Established as an industrial enterprise in 1918, IISCO produced iron from an open-top blast furnace at Hirapur (later to be called Burnpur) in West Bengal for the first time in 1922. Apart from being one of the oldest plants, IISCO has other first times tag feathers in its cap. It became the first Indian blue chip company to have its shares traded at the london Stock Exchange. IISCO reached its pinnacle of performance during the 60s and produced more than a million tonnes of ingot steel. With passage of time and increased global competitiveness there was huge technological shift in ways of steel making. The plant then faced difficult times after rising meteorically. IISCO was amalgamated with SAIl in 2006. The merger with SAIl brought a new lease of life for the plant. The modernisation and expansion programme of SAIl gave new hopes to this very old plant.
